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1.5.1-Frauleindrosselmeyer
Archivist's note: This write-up was posted several months after the other commentary. Brick!Club 1.5.1-4 - Gosh I wonder who this mysterious man could be Everyone else’s meta covered everything I could think of on these chapters. My random liveblogging: It’s a shame how what I’d like to describe as Valjean providing a safe space for his women workers, rather than being sexist, is going to backfire horribly on Fantine. Pick-a-little, talk-a-little, pick-a-little, talk-a-little, cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more - gosh, small towns don’t change, do they? I can see a Desperate Housewives AU where they’re all worried about this mysterious loner who’s just moved into the empty house on Wisteria Lane, with his weird ideas about manufacturing and nettles and his criminal past but actually being heroic. Wait, wasn’t there actually a Housewives character like that? Was it Mike? Assuming his house is filled with skulls and crossbones seems a bit of a leap, though. Nettle metaphor: not subtle, but sweet. I felt much more kindly disposed towards the plant by the end of the page, which is amazing given the pain they gave me as a small child. Crashing funerals? Really? Can’t really blame the townsfolk for gossiping, that’s weird as fuck and also pretty creepy and intrusive. When a mysterious person shows up at a funeral in literature, my thoughts are: either they killed the deceased, they were sleeping with the deceased, they worked with the deceased in a secret government program, or they’re actually Death Personified. On the other hand, there’s the implication that everyone else crashed baptisms, so maybe life events hosted by churches were open-door back then. Was there a free buffet or something? Also creepy and intrusive although somewhat more endearing: breaking into houses to leave money, like a socially-awkward Santa. However, still illegal. I guess it’s symbolic of returning the bread and the silver? Did he break in and fix their broken windows too? Was it a compulsive behaviour to atone for former sins? He’s an ace sharp-shooter! I’m sure that won’t ever come in handy 23 years and a gazillion pages down the line "Blind people are so helpless that if they haven’t starved to death, they really must be loved, because caretaking for them is so onerous! Therefore if you are alive and blind, this is a wonderful affirmation of how much you are loved! Go blindness!” - yeah, I get an ego boost from being tied to a bed and hit with a riding crop partly because if I’m not being actively useful to anyone and yet people are still sticking around to pet me, I must be pretty cool - but I still wouldn’t want to be permanently tied up just so others could prove that I’m cool by sticking by me. Your Victorian crap about saintly ill people is horrible and sucky, Hugo. Also, I hope Baptistine kept some kind of hobbies, and Myriel left her the money for her couch in his will. The next chapter involves the word ‘eclairs,’ and clearly my French is better because a. I was trying to mentally compose Brick!Club posts in French without realising it, and b. for the first time ever I did not think of the pastry. For reference: Harry Potter has a baguette magique and his broom is called a Fire Eclair; I have been struggling with unintentional translation comedy for some time. BUT NO MORE. I DID NOT GIGGLE AT TOMORROW’S ECLAIRS. Eclairs, and also Javert. Yay! Commentary Serrende Hugo seems to have a particular fixation on blindness: he had eye problems that would come and go from sometime in his 20s onwards, but instead of just being worried about going blind he seems to have simultaneously longed for it, according to his biographer Graham Robb. Despite being such an energetic person in general, maybe there was an appealing loss of responsibility in his mind in the scenario…But there does seem to be an unusual amount of empathy fail in not seeing that many people would not see blindness in the same way (and very likely neither would he, had he actually become blind). In any case, the passage feels like a revealing look into his mind. (I had a hard time not giggling at “baguette magique”, too! ^_^)